Citing legal concerns, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday narrowly refused to place Mayor Richard Riordan's government reform initiative on the April ballot pending a federal court order. The council majority in the 8-7 vote argued that the mayor's initiative is so legally flawed that it would expose council members to lawsuits if they put the measure to a citywide vote. Riordan supporters said the decision, in effect, denies voters a voice in government reform. Later in the day, U.S.

Members of the Los Angeles City Council on Friday blasted Mayor Richard Riordan's petition to create an elected government reform panel, calling it invalid because the way panel members would be elected has been changed since the signatures were gathered. However, U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a ruling late Friday that appears to reject the council's arguments.

Nearly 100,000 San Fernando Valley voters on Wednesday began receiving a direct mail appeal from Mayor Richard Riordan to support his petition drive to create an elected citizens panel that would study government reform. Riordan launched the campaign Tuesday with a one-page letter that urges voters to back his plan while taking shots at a separate City Council reform proposal.

Measure T, which would establish a county charter if approved by voters March 26, is being officially opposed by the City Council. Before taking action this week, council members heard an impartial evaluation of the ballot measure by a representative of the League of Women Voters. A backer and an opponent of the charter then presented their cases. Those favoring Measure T argue that it would make county government more efficient by creating a management system similar to private business.

Los Angeles City Council members blasted Mayor Richard Riordan on Friday for employing a controversial former deputy mayor to consult on his campaign to create a government reform panel. Mike Keeley, an attorney who acted as Riordan's chief operating officer, resigned in May after admitting that he had leaked confidential information to lawyers on the opposing side of a contract dispute with the city.

President Obama this morning will ask Congress to give him authority to significantly shrink the federal government by merging six agencies dealing with trade and commerce, a senior administration official said. Obama is seeking power to propose a sweeping consolidation of agencies with overlapping duties with an eye toward saving money and improving performance, the official said. The president is asking Congress to grant him authority held by no president since Ronald Reagan.

When Soviet tanks rumbled into Wenceslas Square on Aug. 21, 1968, Vera Caslavska was at a camp in Moravia, single-mindedly training to defend the Olympic gold medal she had won for Czechoslovakia four years earlier in Tokyo as the best all-around gymnast. Less than 24 hours later, she went into hiding. Friends warned that her freedom was in jeopardy because a few months earlier, in the giddy Prague spring, she had signed the Manifesto of 2,000 Words.

With seven of the Soviet Union's 15 constituent republics now proclaiming independence, the rest of the world community has devised a whole new lexicon to describe its future relationship with the fledgling nations. According to U.S. officials, however, the only thing that really matters is whether full diplomatic recognition is extended. There is no important difference between the various terms that have been used to describe relationships short of full diplomatic recognition.

Yegor K. Ligachev, once the second-most-powerful man in the Kremlin, on Wednesday called his former boss and comrade, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, a coward and a traitor. "I met many Communists who spent decades in labor camps in the permafrost zone but retained their faith in the party," the erstwhile Politburo hard-liner said. "I fail to understand its general secretary who spent three days in the best health resort the country has by the warm sea, then called for its dissolution."